Take A Beat
by Making Marla
Summary: A collection of 200 word drabbles, featuring main characters and minor characters in their time before, during, and after the series. ADDED! Drabble 5: Vicious considers what love is.
1. Literary Aspirations ! Spike

**Literary Aspirations**

Sometimes hethinks that a part of him must be dead because no living person seemed to understand that existence is fraught with pauses—it's in the upbeats of a saxaphonist's tapping foot, it's in the moment before his finger pulls the trigger.

He once heard some big shot novelist read her latest work out loud at the Wasteland Bar, south of Mars. It made him want to throw away his crumbling paperbacks back at the Bebop, because life does not occur in complete sentences; it's composed of gasping beauty, hitched pain, and stilted conversations in between. He wrote that down on a napkin in the bar, the red lights turning his spidery handwriting into a bloody testament of his descent.

When he could still taste life on the barrel of his gun, he read the Beatniks, the Lost Generation, and even the desperate Cowboys of today that considered themselves literary. Then, he was content to cater to life's fickle demands, instead of attempting to capture her on paper. Maybe I'll write a novel when I die, he thought dryly, half grinning at his own wit.

_"I'm not going to die, I'm going to see if I was ever alive."_


	2. Hello, Earth ! Faye

**Hello, Earth**

She felt most alone in the crowds.

Faye hopped on a shuttle to Earth in hope to stir something from her still-frozen memory, and discovered that the only civilization she lay underground. Cities were carved out of abandoned subway stations, shops and shelters set up on the tracks and sidewalks. At first, she loved to wander the cramped marketplaces, sniffing the navels of plump oranges, and haggling over flawed sunglasses. It was almost as if she belonged.

At first, she searched for familiar faces: the woman selling paper flowers had her eyes. A sister? Then she would remember the date. A niece, then? She felt like a ghost, forever trapped in a past that she couldn't even remember.

There were times when she purposely jostled passerbys just to let them know that she was there. _I'm here_, she declared silently as she donned tiny yellow shorts and a top that she spilled out of. _Don't forget me_. She was beginning to develop a confident strut.

She often found herself pausing in the streets, chin tilted upward: tiny birds perched precariously on slanted steel beams, ready to take flight through the bits of starlight that filtered down.

Above, the stars beckoned.


	3. The Gospel of Hitchhiking ! Faye

**The Gospel of Hitchhiking**

Faye drifted, dream-like except for the layer of grit and sweat that clung to her skin when she hitchhiked, thumb pointed impudently. She barely recalled where she came from, or where she was going; she always left behind the same trail of dust, always followed the same meteors flaring overhead.

The monotony of Earth made her itch.

She stood just so: back arched, exaggerating her curves, leaning on one leg, hand on hip. A gun jutted from her exposed thigh.

Only perverts stopped for waif-like girls, but every healthy male stopped for the scantily dressed.

She discovered that when she accepted a ride from a man with a kindly smile. The loose skirt she wore floated around her knees; while he asked her where she was going, his hand found its way to her hem.

That was the first time Faye punched someone, as far as she can remember. Her knuckles were split; blood seeped between her fingers. The wound was raw and ugly for days afterward. For the first time since she awoke, Faye felt the little thrill of pain that told her she was real.

Faye smirked and gripped her gun as a car pulled up beside her.


	4. The Hustler ! Vicious

**The Hustler**

Vicious suspected that Spike was a hustler from the first time they walked side-by-side into the billiard hall, standing close enough for Spike's holster to brush against his hip. It was just too easy, the way he held the cue, the way he smirked when he missed a shot. The most telling clue was that Spike could never quite let himself lose at the end of the game.

Until Julia.

When Vicious brought Julia to the hall, his hand resting on the small of her back as he guided her to their usual table, something about Spike's demeanor changed. There was a gleam to his eyes in the dim light, a contrast to his blustering and bragging and being Spike. Even at the game's end, his aim was sloppy.

Julia, her expression cool, won the game with a shot to the corner pocket. After, she teased Spike, her lips forming that secret smile that Vicious only knew in private. He felt his breath catch quietly in his throat, lodged there as Julia gently pushed Spike in the shoulder, laughing lowly, and Spike complimented him on his taste.

He knew then—perhaps even before Spike did—that Spike was a hustler.


	5. A Four Letter Word ! Vicious

**A Four-Letter Word**

Love is not pretty, nor kind. It smolders under his skin, flaring bright and harsh. Someday, it will consume him.

How easy it was to forget that with her curled against his chest, legs entangled in pale sheets. A gold dawn broke through the windows, casting her in light. He thought love was beautiful then, when it wore her face.

Now, Vicious knows differently: love is a wound, gaping and raw.

Perhaps he should have known, when he planted that bug in her bedroom and heard her soft singing, as melancholy and hopeful as a caged bird. To Julia, love was simply smothering, leaving her gasping and unable to breathe.

He changed for her; gave her distance and air. He watched her from across the street, her shadow dark against diaphanous drapes. Vicious never expected his best friend to fill that space in her arms, her heart. Part of him hates Spike, because he trusted him. But oh, Julia. The love that simmers under his skin feels very much like hate.

Love may destroy him someday, but she will not go unscathed. Even at the cost of his best friend, he will see her wracked with the pain love brings.


End file.
